December 22, 2010

Chicagoans of the Year in design: Landscape architects Peter Schaudt and Ernest Wong brighten the cityscape and reflect their field's rising profile

Chicago’s pantheon of architects is revered around the globe, but its landscape architects are often overlooked, despite the presence of Prairie School parks by the likes of Jens Jensen. Yet that situation has changed dramatically, as personified by the naming of two landscape architects — Peter Schaudt and Ernest Wong — as Chicagoans of the Year.

Schaudt, who credits include the lush new riverfront plaza at Trump International Hotel & Tower, and Wong (above, at Mary Bartelme Park), designer of Chinatown’s lively riverfront Ping Tom Memorial Park, have much in common. Both are modernists in their early 50s, were influenced by the space-shaping natural forms of the eminent landscape architect Dan Kiley, and have thrived as a variety Chicago clients embarked upon bold landscape designs under the leadership of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

They also happen to like each other, despite the fact that they regularly compete for work. Schaudt’s desk overlooks Wong’s vibrant new Mary Bartelme Park in the West Loop, and he makes a point of telling a visitor that people from his office use the park as a kind of outdoor living room. For his part, Wong keeps a delicate pen-and-ink drawing by Schaudt in his conference room. The drawing, made when Schaudt was a student, depicts a tree-filled outdoor space framed by architect Y.C. Wong’s light-filled Atrium Houses in Hyde Park. Y.C. was Ernest Wong father, and Ernest grew up in one of those houses.

Both landscape architects took indirect routes to their field — Schaudt after first studying architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Wong after a childhood spent thinking that landscape architects should take a backseat to architects. “I don’t believe in that” now, he says. “I believe we are on equal ground. We all design important spaces.” Agrees Schaudt: “I think that landscape architecture is just as much an urban catalyst as buildings are.” Their statements reflect the rising confidence and prominence of their field, which increasingly takes the lead in the remaking of urban sites.

Schaudt (left, at Trump Tower) has been in partnership since 2008 with Doug Hoerr in a firm called Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects. Before the partnership formed, Hoerr designed the planted portion of the median planters that bring color and seasonal variety to the urban canyon of Michigan Avenue.

Typically, Schaudt says, he plays off the moves of his collaborating architect. At Helmut Jahn’s State Street Village dormitories at the Illinois Institute of Technology, bosques of white birch trees contrast with the buildings’ machined precision. At the Trump plaza, which was completed this year, native grasses stay low, allowing pedestrians to enjoy million-dollar views of the Chicago River. “I like to look at the site as a stage,” Schaudt says.

It’s a sign of the partnership’s success that its client list now reaches to Toronto, Oklahoma City, and Des Moines.

Wong’s partnership, now 20 years old, is with Robert Sit, who runs the business side of their firm, the Site Design Group. The firm made the news last Monday when the Chicago Loop Alliance, formerly the Greater State Street Council, revealed that it is planning new lighting for the downtown portion of State Street. Site Design has been hired for the job. Yet Wong already had made a name for himself with Ping Tom Memorial Park.

Deftly weaving tough urban elements, like an industrial lift bridge, into his composition, Wong transformed a former railroad yard into a thriving community space, punctuated by a riverfront pavilion with a pagoda-style roof. This year, he celebrated the opening of two new urban parks — the Mary Bartelme Park, which drew hordes of visitors with its off-kilter stainless steel arches and hilly mounds, and the Henry Palmisano Park in Bridgeport, which turned an old quarry and landfill into a striking naturalistic landscape that reveals the site’s rich geologic history. Visitors take a metal boardwalk over a terraced wetland, ending their journey at a fish pond.

In a sign of the growing renown of Chicago’s landscape architecture, Sally Kitt Chappell, author of “Chicago’s Urban Nature: A Guide to the City’s Architecture + Landscape,” proclaimed the 27-acre park “a great work of art.”

Posted at 09:30:26 AM

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Ernie is not only a great landscape architect, he's a great guy! Congratulations, old pal! I'm so happy for your success! (Jodi - your old volleyball bud)